“So if the Crow and the Piegan become angry with each other …”
“They’ll fight. Sure as hell, Colonel, they’ll go to war.”
“I hope,” Wingate said, “you can prevent that from happening here.”
“Pardon me?”
“I have reason to believe, deputy, that Tall Man’s Crows and the Piegan of Cloud Talker may soon declare war on each other. Unless you can stop them.”
Longarm set his whiskey aside and leaned closer to hear the rest of this.
Chapter 11
Longarm and Captain Wingate topped a small rise some dozen miles north of Camp Beloit, the morning sun giving off a pale, watery light through a filter of light clouds that extended from one horizon to the next. They were mounted on horses, Longarm’s a small-boned chestnut that belonged to the battalion adjutant. Neither Longarm nor Wingate thought it appropriate for Longarm to make his appearance at so potentially critical a meeting while sitting a mule’s scrawny back.
And critical this could be, Longarm was thinking after a worrisome night. The northern tribes had been fairly peaceful these past few years. At the moment the only lingering Indian troubles of any real scope or importance involved the recurrent Apache outbreaks far to the south.
But a reopening of hostilities in the north could be a disaster, not only for the Indians involved, but because of the potential that violence, once started, could quickly spread to include innocent civilians who were flooding now onto lands once closed to them.
All through the northern plains prospectors and miners were leading the way into raw new lands, and businessmen were close on their heels. Wherever customers had needs to fill and money with which to buy, there would soon be a storekeeper eager to supply those needs. And where there were storekeepers there would as quickly be teamsters, freighters, and express lines. Wherever there were people in need of food, there soon thereafter were bound to be farmers breaking new ground to the plow, raising hay for livestock, grain for both stock and people, vegetables for the market. The burgeoning new towns would be in need of pork and eggs and chickens for the soup pot or the roaster. Ranchers would put cattle onto the open plains to graze, and wolfers would come along to collect furs and bounties and at the same time make the land safer for the production of meat and hides.
Wherever people gathered there soon would be churches, schools, whores, newspapers, and lawyers.
And all of this, every bit of it, was threatened by the likelihood of hostilities between the Crow and the Piegan.
Worrisome? Longarm damn well reckoned that it was. He hoped to be able to talk some sense into Tall Man and into Cloud Talker. Whoever the hell he was.
Talk some sense, that is, once he fully understood just what it was that was going on here. It was a subject Captain Wingate had left deliberately unclear.
“Like I told you,” Wingate said the night before, “I know much too little about Indians and their ways. Even having the facts, or believing that I do, I am simply not prepared to deal with the problem as, well, as these Indians see it.
“Perhaps you will be able to both understand and to advise them, Deputy. After all, both of them asked for your counsel.”
“For me?”
Wingate nodded. “By name. And each one of them came up with the idea independently. Neither knew of the other’s request. I am positive about that. They aren’t talking to one another at all, unless you consider taunts and war cries to be conversation. No, each of them mentioned your name without knowing the other was doing the same. That is why I got my wire off to the War Department asking for your assignment here.”
“Kinda odd, don’t you think, since I never heard of this Cloud Talker with the Bloods. Tall Man I know, but not Cloud Talker.”
“Perhaps Cloud Talker will explain that when you see him tomorrow,” Wingate suggested.
Well, now they were fixing to find out what the deal was here.
Or so Longarm hoped.
Because a whole lot of lives could be at stake. It would be bad enough if the two bands of Indians squared off and went to war with each other.
But it would be a disaster of far-reaching influence if their battles picked the scabs off old wounds and reminded the other tribes that warfare was the most honorable expression of their way of life.
There would be pure hell to pay if the smell of gunsmoke from this quarrel whetted the appetites of the other tribes and new outbreaks spread through the northern tribes.
The tribes already resented the continuing incursions of whites into the Black Hills and out on the vast grasslands of the north. With that resentment already strong, there was no telling how small a spark might lead to a giant conflagration or how many lives could be wasted in the battles that would follow.
This business between the Crow and the Piegan on the Upper Belle Fourche was damn-all serious, Longarm knew, and his hope was that it could be defused without harm to anyone. That was why he was anxious now to see his old friend Tall Man. And to meet the Piegan who called himself Cloud Talker.
Toward that end he gave his borrowed horse only the briefest of rests before motioning for Wingate to follow and pressing on toward the ragged collection of lodges that marked the Crow encampment.
Chapter 12
“Is this the whole Crow camp?” Longarm asked, surprised by how few lodges there were. The entire affair was strung out for no more than a half mile or so along Janus Creek, while the Piegan camp, off in the distance past the Crows, was several times that size. What Longarm could see of it. There appeared to be more beyond a far rise, but he could not be sure of that.
“Three hundred twenty males of fighting age,” Wingate told him.
“And the Piegan?”
“Something over nine hundred. I don’t have an exact count for them. They keep promising to give one, but never seem to get around to it. Not even to the agent in charge of issuing their rations.” Wingate smiled a little. “Drives him crazy, let me tell you.”
“That isn’t anything personal, Colonel. Not with you nor the Indian agent either. The Bloods are simply like that. They like to keep a few surprises in hand. If they ever do give you a figure, it won’t be accurate. And they could move the numbers in either direction, down so you won’t think they’re a menace, or up so you’ll think them stronger than they are. The one thing you can count on is that they won’t tell you the truth.”
“Call it three hundred on the one side, though, and nine hundred on the other,” Wingate said, going back to the original point. “If they decide to go to war, I will have one hundred twelve soldiers, including officers, to control them.”
“Jeez, they gave you a lot to work with here, didn’t they?” Longarm said.
“Two understrength companies of infantry. No field artillery. No field surgeon. No battalion stores. We are supposed to draw rations from the agency here. Military equipment, ammunition, and the like are to be requisitioned from Fort Robinson and hauled by civilian contractors. Which in practical terms means that we are expected to be self-sufficient apart from foodstuffs. Fortunately I do have some limited authority to make purchases on the local market, which would be in Deadwood.”
Longarm was struck by the fact that the officer seemed more conscious of his command’s shortcomings regarding supply than he did about his military mission here. But then Longarm remembered that Wingate did say his expertise lay in the area of supply. Logistics, Wingate called it; plain old boring supply was what it actually was.